pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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DIEBOLD (OR AT LEAST TRIP FORCEFULLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT)

293.

It�s 11:30 PM Sunday night, 29 January 2006, and my house feels eerily quiet and empty now that Pottergrrrl has returned to the mountains.

My pal Cybrarian is going to laugh when she reads this (because she�s already asked if there�s anything Pottergrrrl can�t do�and, truthfully, now that I know she can reupholster furniture and make a wedding cake, I�m wondering that too) but, here goes: Pottergrrrl sewed gorgeous curtains for my living room this morning and they look so good that I decided to rearrange the room to do them justice.

This prompted me to spiff up my dining room which prompted me to spiff up my studio which prompted me to straighten up my messy office which prompted me to vacuum, which means that, with the exception of the downstairs bathroom (which still boasts a few stubborn chunks of ugly-ass blue-ivy wallpaper that I swear are attached to the wall with Superglue) and the dirty kitchen floor and the unorganized cabinet under the kitchen sink, my downstairs is nearly spotless.

Two of my upstairs rooms look pretty damn good too, although I still need to dust and vacuum and scrub my bedroom and master bathroom and, really, rip out and replace the caulk around my shower tiles too (although let�s pretend I didn�t say that, okay?).

I�ve been pondering what to plant in my yard this spring because, yes, as a matter of fact I do have spring fever already. Blame it on what writer John Rosenthal refers to as January Spring�that five-or-so week period down south when temperatures suddenly soar into the seventies and the sky turns an unblemished blue that is all the more vibrant because we�ve seen foggy gray for so long. We spy that blue and dutifully pull out our T-shirts and shorts and ooh and aaah over the foolish pink tulip poplars and purple hyacinths that bloomed way too early and silently agree to pretend that we don�t know that it will freeze again before winter is officially over.

�

January 31, 2006. Thomas Merton�s birthday and the 141st anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery�which I suppose makes it a particularly appropriate day for Coretta Scott King to die. Then again, maybe she just couldn�t bear the reality of a 58 to 43 split vote confirming a Supreme Court neocon who is opposed to affirmative action. And then there were none....

I guess we should all look forward to the boy king bragging about his latest victory in his fifth State of (Dis)Union Address tonight, huh? Not that I�ll bother to listen. I know branding and doublespeak when I hear it and would rather read the summary and assessments tomorrow.

And speaking of W�s �regal reign of error,� Tom at Tomdispatch.com points out that four Januaries have already passed since our wanna-be emperor used his Address to �brand Iran, Iraq, and North Korea�the first two then bitter enemies, the third completely unrelated to either of them and on the other side of the planet�as a World-War-II-style �axis of evil.�� And it�s already been three Januaries since W said, with a straight face, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Given his tantrums and heightened delusions of grandeur, I half expect him to stamp his boots impatiently during the Address tonight while insisting that he has the right, people, as our commander-'n'-chief to listen to any goddamn phone call he damn well wants to listen to. After all, the House and Senate are majority Republican now and W�s Brownie cronies are positioned in all over the political spectrum and the corporate media system that might question all this no longer answers to the people but, instead, sucks up the profits that W�s big corporate tax breaks provide them and they control the news. He�d probably stick his damn tongue out at us too if Dick weren�t sitting behind him with that arrogant sneer on his face, ready to backslap him if he doesn�t stick to their carefully constructed fear-eliciting Brand W schtick.

So progressives are calling for people to �make a joyful noise and figuratively drown out� the Address tonight. This is part one of a two-part Bush Step Down rally that culminates Saturday in front of the White House, where they plan to demand that W step down and take his program with him.

Now I�m all for rallies that might accomplish something or at least draw attention to an issue that can be addressed, but this is the pure-T definition of pipe dream, at least at this juncture. I do hope that more independent news outlets will notice the statistics cited in Mark Crisin Miller�s Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They�ll Steam the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) and pressure politicians into starting up yet another investigation into crimes committed by this administration though. Miller says

for GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states. Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that �moral values� had made the difference.

In reference to the 2002 congressional elections, he outlines how, in Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, and �a couple of other states�there was what we might call �Diebold magic� everywhere. In all these states, you had far-right-wing politicians predicted to lose by pre-election newspaper polls and by exit polls,� yet all of them won.

During the presidential elections, electronic touchscreen machines flipped Kerry votes into Bush votes in at least eleven states and evidence of wrongdoing in Ohio is copious.

Bush allegedly won that state by 118,000 votes, but the various stratagems, tricks and tactics used to prevent people from registering, to prevent them from voting, to throw away provisional ballots [see John Conyers� report to the House Judiciary Committee]�all ... add up to a number far greater than 118,000.

Ohio practices were applied in other key states as well, most notably Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, New York and New Mexico, where

we're told that Bush won by some 7,000 votes. We know of over 17,000 Democratic voters who were unable to cast a vote for president [though] because the touchscreen machines in their districts refused to record a vote for president.

These 17,000-plus New Mexicans turned out to vote in Democratic areas, and they didn't record a vote for president. Seventeen thousand is 10,000 more than 7,000. That glitch alone can account for the ostensible victory margin of Bush over Kerry in New Mexico. Greg Palast's new book will have a whole chapter on New Mexico. It's hair-raising stuff, and we haven't heard a word about it. The same kind of thing happened in Iowa, where Bush supposedly won by under 10,000 votes.�

The press kept telling us after the election that a huge outpouring of religious voters account for Bush's miraculous victory,� Miller said. �Well that's nothing more than a talking point that the religious right itself put out after the election. There is no statistical evidence whatsoever that there was any increase in the number of religious voters. ... Exit polls were most inaccurate�by a big margin�in those areas that used electronic voting machines with no paper trail ... (and particularly noticeable in 5 swing states).

Miller advises people to check out the Election Incident Reporting System website, where you can type in the name of your state or county and see a transcript of all the complaints that were lodged that day by people who called 1-866-MY-VOTE.

�

And on that note, I am going to change into my gym clothes and head over to kung fu class. I quit shorin0ryu and tae kwan do after ruining my shoulder, but I hope it will let me do this style.

Ciao.

4:39 p.m. - 2006-01-31

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